Podcast: The Greg Scheer Music Podcast

But of course, first, we have to discuss what Lent is. So for those of you who are not familiar with the church year, the church year is our basic cycles. You know, of course, Christmas and Easter, but the liturgical year, or the church year as it’s called, is a little bit more involved series of days. So generally speaking Easter and Christmas are the, kind of, pivotal moments, but if you follow the liturgical calendar then you would back up before Christmas with Advent, the preparation for Christ’s coming, and then before Easter with Lent, which is a season of preparation for Christ’s resurrection.

So Lent is a time that it tends to be. . . well, it has a number of themes that go along with it. So Lent is the 40 days before Easter minus Sundays. Now, 40 days minus Sundays. So there are some churches that do what’s called “hiding the alleluia,” and they don’t say “alleluia” for the whole of Lent. But actually, if you’re going to get really technical on this, then every Sunday in Lent is what’s called a “little Easter.” Every Sunday is a celebration, a little celebration of the resurrection. So, you know, officially speaking you can say “alleluia” all you want to during Lent, and we don’t have to get too law-driven about the whole thing.

But it’s 40 days of penitence and those type of things. This mirrors many of the 40s of the Bible. So think about Israel— 40 years in the wilderness, Noah— 40 days and nights on the ark, 40 days of Jesus’ temptation in the desert. So all those kinds of 40s. And there are indeed some songs that focus on this 40. I’m thinking, for example, there’s a song by James Gertmenian called “Throughout These Lenten Days,” and it’s one of these songs that talks about Lent. There’s another one called “Throughout These 40 Days and Nights,” [edit: Greg meant “Lord, Who Throughout These Forty Days”] and it’s basically a call to observe Lent. Now, those, they can be useful in certain situations, but I don’t get a lot of mileage out of those. They’re kind of one-trick ponies in a lot of ways. But I can lead you to some other resources that I think are really quite useful.

So, for example, Lent begins with Ash Wednesday. It’s the, Ash Wednesday is the first day of Lent. It marks off the season, and you’ll remember that in that service, you get the sign of ashes on your forehead. Usually what happens is they put the sign of ashes in the form of a cross on your forehead. And, it’s really quite a powerful service. It’s remembering that you are dust. It’s a service of mortality, and it remembers that you are completely reliant on God for life and breath.

So it’s a good way to go into this time of kind of extraordinary discipline, is to remember your own mortality. It’s also, I think, pretty important for us as Christians to always have an eye on the end game. So if we only talk about resurrection and joy and those kinds of things and never talk about death and the inevitability of our own departure from this world and into Christ’s presence, I think that we are underprepared for that.

So what I do with a congregation is I try to make sure that I have some songs that serve as bridges between the liturgical year and funerals. So, and I know this sounds very, very morbid, and I’m sorry. But one of the songs that I use a lot is one that I wrote called “From the Dust.” It’s actually a setting of Psalm 103, and it goes like this:

From the dust you shall raise us up.
From the dust of death, you shall raise us up.
From the dust, you shall raise us up.
From the dust of death, you shall raise us up.

So on the one hand it’s quite somber, but I think that one of the things that this serves is, from Psalm 103, where it says that God remembers that we are frail humans and that we come from dust and will return to dust. So it’s playing on that image. And it’s a really good one to sing on Ash Wednesday because we’re getting the sign of ashes, but it’s also one that I’ve used in funerals many times, and it’s a really good way to make a connection between what we do on Sundays, or on Wednesday in this case, and what we do in these kind of extraordinary circumstances like a funeral. And I think that we need to build in the hope of resurrection into the songs that we. . . Well, I should say it this way: We want to build in the inevitability of death and the hope of resurrection into all that we do on a week-to-week basis, so that it’s baked into our faith and that we’re ready to act on it when someone dies in our congregation.

So, Ash Wednesday. And then once we get beyond Ash Wednesday then we get into the Sundays of Lent. And I remember, it tends to be that Lent is quite, not morose, but it’s a little bit down, right? It’s not the happiest season; in fact it’s probably the lowest season in the church year. As I said, some people will not even sing “alleluia” during this whole time. And we tend to focus on issues of confession and contrition, those kinds of things. And I remember one time, I was in the middle of Lent, and someone comes up to me and says, “The music has all been so down lately.” And I said, “It’s Lent— you’re not supposed to be happy!” And I don’t know if that’s true, actually, if discipline and happiness don’t go together. But certainly there is that side of Lent, so penitence, discipline, confession, spiritual journey, all of those kinds of things are part of it, and I think are really good things to bring out. So, thinking spiritual journey, a really good one, and this is one that is not totally morose. It’s more just looking at the journey and thinking about following Christ wherever Christ will go, including to the cross.

Jesus, draw me ever nearer. . .

You know this one. So it’s the song by Margaret Becker and Keith Getty. That’s a really great one to highlight the devotional and the spiritual journey aspect of Lent.

Another place we’re probably gonna land a lot during Lent is Psalm 51. This is like the, they’re plenty of penitential Psalms, but this is the most famous one. This is the one that David wrote, sang, in response to Nathan’s prophecy saying that God saw his sin. And, so, a lot of times, you’ll read Psalm 51 in church during Lent, maybe you’ll have confessions based on it, those kinds of things. There are lots and lots of great songs based on Psalm 51. I’ll just give you a couple ideas. . . . We’ll see if I can do all these by memory! One is “God, Be Merciful,” and it’s to the tune REDHEAD. Love that.

God, be merciful to me. . .

You know that one, right? So that’s, it’s a hymn called “God, Be Merciful to Me.” That’s a great one. Then there’s the one from the 70s, I think.

Create in me a clean heart, O God,
and renew a right spirit in me.

So that’s a classic one, and it goes along with Psalm 51. If you get creative you often can add a reading of Psalm 51 together with the singing of that. That’s a great way to do that. There’s another one that I really like. There’s a song called “Restore My Soul” by Andi Rozier. He’s from the Harvest, one of the Harvest churches, and it’s just a really wonderful setting. It takes the tune O WALY WALY, which is, the folk tune would be “The Water Is Wide,” and it’s been used as a hymn a number of times.

Restore my soul, O Lord my God. . .

I can’t remember the words. And then it says, “At the cross, I find a way. . .” It adds a chorus to O WALY WALY. That’s a great one. I use that lots and lots. I’m kind of thinking out loud here about the kinds of songs. . . When I go into a season, I often will just create a, kind of a big pile of songs, and some of these are songs that I know that I definitely want to do by the end of the season. You know, it won’t be Christmas until I sing this song, or it won’t be Lent until I sing that song. And, so, you know, you’ll have your bag of tricks and you come back to those. And sometimes what I’ll do is I’ll create a document on my computer that is just, you know, “Lent Songs,” or “Palm Sunday Songs,” something like that, so I can kind of remember over the years what I’ve done.

Another thing, kind of a go-to resource during Lent, is the 10 Commandments. Now, Psalm 51 is a little bit lower-hanging fruit because we can sing it. The 10 Commandments, there are a couple 10 Commandments songs but no one wants to sing a 10 Commandments song. Sorry, to all the people that wrote 10 Commandments songs. But, the 10 Commandments, even though we talk about, kind of, hooking our morality, our faith’s morality on the 10 Commandments, we very rarely use them in worship. And most of us, I read a statistic one time, that most Americans and even Christians can’t name even, like, three of the Commandments. And, I think that’s a shame. I think that we need to use that more often.

Now, in my tradition, which is Christian Reformed tradition, there are many churches that, every week, will follow the confession and assurance with a reading of the 10 Commandments. It’s kind of an interesting thing. So, first of all, that’s one of the distinctives of the Reformed faith, is a very prominent confession and assurance every week in the service. Now, you might not be of that persuasion, and that might seem like too much. I totally get that. I do think that you should be confessing sometimes, in your church, that this is not something only that you do privately, but that one of the things we do in worship is do as a group the kinds of things that we want to encourage in people’s private faith. So if we never read the 10 Commandments, if we never meditate on those, if we never confess in church, then why would we expect that our people will go home and will have any kind of spiritual discipline of confession?

So, now I’m preachin’! So, we were at confession and many Christian Reformed churches will end the confession with the 10 Commandments. And the interesting theological idea here, is that rather than the 10 Commandments being this kind of, truancy officer that comes in and beats you and tells you what you did wrong, that instead in this tradition, you confess and you hear the assurance that God still loves you and forgives your sins, and then you are called to renewed life, and that’s when you read the 10 Commandments. So basically, these are laws of life rather than laws of death. And it says, “God has given you grace, so now let’s live into that grace. And here are 10 things that you should keep in mind as you live joyfully and as well as you can before God’s face.” And that’s the 10 Commandments.

So, and I understand that the 10 Commandments is a really hard sell in a church service. They can feel very, very dry. So one of the things that I’ve done is I recently wrote a responsive reading of the 10 Commandments. So the leader will say each of the 10 Commandments, and after it the congregation will say, let’s see, in the first part it will say, “Let us love our God with our spirit, soul, strength,” something to that effect. And then in the second part, where it’s dealing with laws about how we relate to humans, it says, “Let us love our neighbors as ourselves.”

And so then the people are just, first of all, kind of baked into that reading is the fact that there are two, what they call the two tables of the law. The first is how you should relate to God. The second is, I think the second six Commandments, are how you should relate to people. And so, in the first part of it, it says the Shema, which is “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and strength.” That’s the response to how we relate to God. And then the people’s response in the last half of the law is what Jesus said when he had to summarize the law, which is “Love your God with all your heart, soul, and strength,” and, “Let us love our neighbors as ourselves.” And so, so we get that, you know, kind of New Testament eyes as part of the 10 Commandments. And it’s a reading that, it flows pretty well, and you can find this at my website. I’m going to provide a link in the podcast episode so that you can click through to that and use it in your own services. I think it’s quite effective.

So that is an intro to Lent, and gets us started a little bit with thinking about this. I’m hoping that this will help you as you start to kind of wrap your head around what the next few months will be as you start to prepare for Lent. I hope that this will be helpful and give you a few resources that will lead you a little closer to planning your worship services well.

So, thanks. I, once again, am Greg Scheer. This is the Greg Scheer Music Podcast, and I look forward to chatting again.

So, I led a service in the Calvin University Chapel, and that was part of the Calvin Worship Symposium. I led it on Tuesday, which was February 1st, 2022. And I thought I would just let you hear the talk. The talk is centered around Psalm 123 and God’s mercy. And there is also a video online of this, and the url will be in the notes below the podcast. And I would encourage you to watch the video, in part because the first song is my setting of Psalm 123. There is a beautiful dance to it. Rachit Kharel did a dance to it while people listened to it being played over the speakers, and it’s well worth the time of watching.

Now, in this podcast, because the sound wasn’t great live for that song, I spliced in the song from a recording, and you can listen to that, and then the talk starts after that.

The talk starts looking at Psalm 123, and sees this Psalm as a Psalm of being seen. After that, the congregation, I led the congregation in singing just the chorus of that song. And Psalm 123 is also a Psalm of mercy, so I talked a little bit about God’s mercy. And then we end the chapel with some more singing.

So, without further ado, listen to Psalm 123 and the God of Mercy in the Calvin University Chapel on February 1st, 2022.

Have mercy. Have mercy Lord.
Have mercy. Have mercy Lord.

Our eyes look to you.
Our eyes look to heaven.
Our eyes look to you
until you show your mercy, God.

Cast your eyes on us.
Cast your eyes on earth.
Cast aside the proud
who bind us with no mercy, God.

That song was based on Psalm 123. It’s something that I wrote a couple years ago, and we’re going to use that as a way in to look at Psalm 123 and God’s mercy. So, if we can have those words up.

So, side by side this is Psalm 123 and then my setting of Psalm 123. When you write a song based on a Psalm, you need to kind of dig into the Psalm and see what it is at its core. And this Psalm, I see it as a Psalm of being seen. So look at all the seeing words that are being used in that Psalm: “I lift up my eyes, I lift up my eyes to the heavens.” The first part of it is all about lifting up the eyes to the heavens. Of course, the servant-master language is troubling for us as modern readers, but it still gives that sense of dependence, looking up in dependence.

And then the second part is God looking down to us, God looking down in mercy. We’re basically praying for God’s mercy. And this is where I see this Psalm as being seen. And, you hear this word a lot— we want to be seen, we want to be known as we really are, and we often think of Jesus, I think, as someone who sees us, but not sees us in the way we want to be seen.

I think we see Jesus as the ultimate Santa. He knows when you’re sleeping; he knows when you’re awake. He knows when you’ve been bad or good, so be good for heaven’s sake. He’s just like, “I’m watching you.” But that’s not the way it is. The way it is is more like this, where we are being seen by God. It’s more like a parent who thinks that a child is just the most beautiful, smartest thing in the whole world, and because of that love, because of that sense of being known to the core of your being and being accepted, then you’re able to live into that love.

I want you to just keep looking at this for a second. We’re going to sing the chorus of that song. But I want you to just ask the Spirit to reveal something in these words, either the Psalm or the song, something that speaks to you. And then we’re going to pray that.

Just find that image in your mind. What is the Spirit saying to you?

Have mercy. Have mercy, Lord.
Have mercy. Have mercy, Lord. . .

This idea of mercy is also in this Psalm. And it’s one that I’ve been thinking a lot about as I have thought about, about meeting here. I think “mercy” is a word like “grace.” It has lost its power over time, right? If someone says to you, “What is grace?” What do you say? You say, “Unmerited favor,” right, because that’s what you’ve learned in Sunday School. But after a while, these words, they become associated with other things. For example, you say grace before a meal, and that kind of muddies the waters. Same thing with mercy, and you have to. . . I was thinking about, how do I reclaim this word? How do I reclaim this idea of mercy to some of the impact that it really has.

And as I was thinking about this, the first thing that came to mind, and this is kind of a silly illustration. Did any of you play Mercy when you were a kid? Some people call it Uncle. All right, so this is like the schoolyard thing, where, you know, young boys try to prove how tough they are. You grab each other’s hands, lock hands, and then go, right? It’s almost like arm wrestling, and you push, push, push, push, push. And if you start to overpower the other person enough so that it starts to hurt them, and of course boys are not going to give up very easily and not want to lose face. But at the very point that you feel you’re about to have your fingers broken, you say, “Mercy!” Right? And that’s the image that came to mind, and it’s helpful in the sense that this is the idea of mercy of relent. We’re saying, “Relent. Stop. I’m at your power. I’m at your mercy.” Right? Like, that’s the figure of speech closest to it. You say, “I’m at your mercy.”

And so there’s that sense of powerlessness, and being beholden. And many humans, we don’t like to be beholden to anything. Right, but we are beholden to lots of things. We are beholden to parents, we are beholden to disease, to addiction, to oppression. All of these things like this have power over us. And I think the beauty of Psalm 123, is that it says that there’s this ultimate power, and that’s who we appeal to for mercy.

As I continued to think about mercy, and I was trying to tease this out, suddenly a phrase came to my mind, that mercy is the anti-karma. So you know this idea of karma, right? That what goes around comes around. And I’m sure that Buddhist would have a more fuller, a fuller definition of what karma is. Right, “you’re going to get yours,” right? “Karma’s going to get you.” And there’s that idea of accusation. And the reason that we have this, I think, is because we have this innate sense that we deserve something bad, right? I was thinking about all of the kinds of phrases that we use. “Karma will catch up with you. You’ll get yours.” I was even thinking of the Nine Inch Nails song: “Bow down before what you serve. You’re gonna get what you deserve.” He’s got that really strong sense throughout that whole album. Trent Reznor has that really strong sense that he needs to pay for something.

And I think that humans have that inside them. We feel that we need to pay for something. And the idea of mercy is the anti-karma. It lifts that and says, “No, you don’t have to pay for that. Jesus has paid for that.” That you can appeal to God for mercy, and that your own personal sins, the oppressions of the world, will all eventually bow down to God, so that we are released from what we need to pay for that.It’s a really profound thing. Once again, it’s so easy to fall back to the Sunday School definitions of this, but it’s such a powerful thing and I would encourage you to contemplate on that.

Just like grace, we can remind ourselves that there’s no way that we can earn this. This is something that God does, and not something that we earn. Once again, in the same way that we have this internal sense of retribution, that we need to pay for our sins, we also have this sense that we need to earn love. Right, that God just can’t love us just because he has great affection for us. No, we have to earn it in some way.

So if we can’t earn it, what can we do? What is the proper response to mercy? It seems to me that there are three responses. The first, is simply a reflex of joy and thanksgiving. This idea of relief, of just exhaling, and saying, “I am at God’s mercy, and that’s a good mercy.” And just being so thankful for that. And anything that we do, when we respond to God we respond in thanksgiving.

The next thing that we can do is we can live up to that mercy. So if you think about, you know, all the classic movies where the no good person that is still somewhat loveable, you know, does something wrong and then the judge lets him off at the last minute. Now, there are two ways that this can happen when you find that mercy, when you find that you’ve been disentangled from paying for your sins. There are two ways that you can deal with this. The one is you can say, “Phew, I got away, now I can do something even worse and hope for the best.” And that’s the kind of scoundrel version of this.

But what we hope we’ll do is that when that person lets you off, when God lets you off and says, “I’m going to show you mercy because of my deep affection for you, because I know you’re better than that,” that the thing that we do is we live into that, we live up to that. That God says, “I’m not going to make you pay for this. Instead I want you to just be who you really are. I see you, and I love you as you are, and I know that you can live into this.” It’s a beautiful thing that that’s our response to kind of getting off the hook, is not just getting off the hook, but saying, “Well, what would a better person do? How can I respond in a better way?”

And then the third thing that seems to me is a response to mercy is that we pay it forward. It seems to me that Christianity in general is a pay-it-forward religion. There’s nothing we can do, right? So, I mean, we can give our praise back to God, but there’s nothing we can do to earn, to pay it back, anything like that. And I think that what God is always looking for us to do is to mimic what he’s done, and to go out and be merciful. So we think about in the New Testament the ungrateful servant who is shown mercy, the debt is paid, and then goes out and throttles someone that’s under them to get some money out of him. That’s the bad example. So, the paying forward of it is to have mercy to those around you, to see the best in people, and give them the chance that they need to live into that. And that seems to me what we really need to think about as we think about mercy.

We are going to respond with singing, which is a way of having joy and thanksgiving. Let’s stand together and we’re going to sing a couple songs.

There’s a wideness in God’s mercy
like the wideness of the sea.
There’s a kindness in God’s justice
which is more than liberty.
There is no place where earth’s sorrows
are more felt than up in heaven.
There is no place where earth’s failings
have such kindly judgment given.

For the love of God is broader
than the measures of the mind,
and the heart of the eternal
is most wonderfully kind.
Make our love, O God, more faithful.
Let us take you at your word,
and our lives will be thanksgiving
for the goodness of the Lord.

Praise the Lord! His mercy is more;
stronger than darkness, new every morn.
Our sins,  they are many; his mercy is more.

For copyright reasons I need to fade out at this point. You may recognize this song as “His Mercy Is More.” It’s a great song by Matt Boswell and Matt Papa. Before that we heard “There’s a Wideness in God’s Mercy” by Gregg DeMey. Gregg is a friend, and I think he would be okay with me playing this song on my podcast. So that’s a beautiful new melody written for the old words of “There’s a Wideness in God’s Mercy.” Information on both of those songs will be in the information on the podcast below.

So thanks so much for being with me today. Once again this is the Greg Scheer Music Podcast, and I look forward to being with you again soon.

So lately I’ve been playing a lot of jazz. I have a weekly jazz gig on Thursday nights— feel free to stop by and watch us. And that’s given me this desire to play better, to become a better bass player, to become a better jazz musician. So I’ve been thinking a lot about that.

One of the things that I did to become a better jazz musician was to take a lesson with a local pianist. He’s a really great jazz pianist and has taught jazz in the area. So, I actually played with him one Thursday night, and I said, “Hey, do you give lessons?” And he said, “Yes,” and so I took a lesson with him. Now, I have to tell you about this lesson. I have not had a lesson, a music lesson, in 20 or 30 years. It’s just been forever since I have had a lesson. So, I showed up at his house; I had a big stack of jazz songs that I had written and we were going to go through those. And I realized I was perspiring as I was getting ready to take this lesson. I was just really nervous about it.

And I was telling another pianist, the pianist who normally plays on Thursday nights. I was telling him about this, and I said, “Oh, I took a lesson with our mutual friend.” And he said, “Really? How’d that go?” And I said, “Well, I was so nervous.” And he says, “Why were you nervous?” And I said, “Why wouldn’t I be nervous?” Now, you have to understand, this pianist is very extroverted, and I am not, and I think that that would be a lot of why I would be nervous about taking a lesson and he would just kind of go into it.

But I, what I explained to him is that the reason that I was nervous about taking this lesson is because when you take a lesson from somebody, you’re essentially telling them what you don’t know. You’re exposing your faults, especially when this is someone that I play with around town somewhat frequently. It’s a pretty vulnerable thing to stop time and let them hear what you can do and what you can’t do, and let them know all your weaknesses.

The fact is that none of us want to be found out to be a fraud, but most of us are worried about that very thing. We’re just, I don’t know about you, but this is where our nightmares come from. You know, some people have the nightmare about speaking in front of a crowd and they’re naked. I usually have these nightmares where I am woefully unprepared for whatever concert that I am supposed to be doing, and I’m, in my dream, all night long, I’m running home to get a tuxedo, and then I come back to the place and I realize I haven’t brought my bass, and on and on it goes. None of us want to be exposed and shamed in that kind of way.

So, while we all have that reflex, that kind of shame reflex, that wants to hide, and wants to not expose our weaknesses, the fact is that the only way to improve is to admit what we don’t know. None of us wants to be the person in the room that doesn’t get a joke, the only one that’s not laughing at a particular joke because we don’t know a word that a person used in the joke, or a historical character. And we think, “Oh my goodness, everybody knows this historical character but me.”

And so, the reality is that we need to— our desire for growth needs to be greater than our sense of shame. We have to want to grow and to learn more than we want to protect our image and keep our image intact from people knowing that we have weaknesses and that we sometimes fail. So, the other thing about this, this kind of commitment to learning and this commitment to growth. . . And I would say that it’s also simultaneously a commitment to failure, because that’s part of growth, is failing and getting back up and trying to do things again.

So, part of that commitment to growth is that it helps us from being a one trick pony or becoming a cranky old curmudgeon. So what do I mean by this? Well, in our 20s and maybe into our 30s we tend to, that’s a time of growth for us. We’re in school, we’re learning, we’re young enough that it’s not shameful to admit the things that we don’t know. And we tend to have people around us that are able to, you know, teachers who will be able to help us in our growth. But I’ve seen so many people, especially in the world of worship, where they get through their kind of college years, that kind of formative time in their 20s, and they haven’t learned anything but the one thing that they know. And then when they become 30 or 40, styles change, times change, and suddenly their church wants them to do something that is not in their sweet spot, and they don’t know what to do.

And I’ve seen many people, as they get into their 40s, instead of re-envisioning themselves as a different kind of person or a broader person, one who is conversant in a broader array of styles, they just say, “Okay, well, I’m going to be a legacy person. I’m going to quit this job and I’m going to go to a job where people in my demographic appreciate what I do.” And that’s just sad, that so many people have not been able to retool themselves to work, and to continue to work over the years in a particular ministry or a particular music style.

The other thing that learning does is it keeps us from being a cranky old curmudgeon. You know, the musical version of the person who sits on his lawn, and sits on a chair and says, “Get off my lawn, kids!” You know, if you don’t expand your range and expand your mind and continue to grow, then you have to hunker down and protect the little thing that you have. So, I’m a person who really encourages people to commit to growth.

One of the things, for example, in some of my books that I’ve talked about, is that I think that every worship leader should have some kind of musical experience outside of church. So, for example, for a number of years, especially early on when I was conducting choirs in churches, I was in a top class choir in Pittsburgh. And I was just a singer in that group. Every once in a while I would lead some sectionals and things like that. But mostly, I was just a singer. And I was there because I wanted to learn how to sing better, I wanted to observe a really good conductor. How do they run a rehearsal? What do they ask for? What are the ways that they get the things that they want? That was a really important thing.

I know other worship directors who might be jazz musicians, and they work outside of the church in that area. And the reason I think it’s so important is because, if you don’t have some kind of musical avenue outside of what you do in the church. In a church setting, you’re almost always pulling people along with you. You’re usually the best musician in the room, and you’re pulling people along with you. You need to be in a situation where you’re not the best musician in the room, where you feel uncomfortable, because other people know things that you don’t. They’re able to do things that you can’t do, and you have to scramble to keep up. That’s where the real growth happens.

So, as we come into a new year, I am once again committing to growth. For example, I just emailed a bass player who I admire a lot. I’ve heard him play, and I’ve asked if he would give me lessons. I’ve just bought a five string bass, and so I’m learning the five string bass. If any of you are four string bassists, and you’ve switched to the five string, you know how awkward that can be because you’re constantly reaching for the wrong string. So I’ve committed to learning the five string bass and the way that that instrument will expand my palette. I’m practicing scales, I’m reading books, I’m asking questions. I wanna be the guy that asks the stupid questions, but then learns the answer to it, and can incorporate it into my growth.

So my question, as we come into this new year, is, what area of growth are you going to commit to? So, think about it. What is your weak area? You know, they always talk about “what is your growing edge?” So, what is your growing edge? What is the place musically, or spiritually? Is there a class you could take, are there lessons you could take, a book you could read? Is there some way that you could put yourself in that kind of, anxiety-inducing place that is so, such a fertile area for growth?

And so that is simply my admonition to you, my Greg Scheer Music Podcast listeners, is that in this coming year, you take some time to think about where is it that you would like to grow?

That’s all I’ve got for you this week. I will talk to you later.